Hanson: The Un-Midas Touch (5)

Everything that Barack Obama touches seems to turn to dross. Think of it for a minute. He inherited a quiet Iraq (no American combat deaths at all in December 2009). Joe Biden bragged of the calm that it would be the administration’s “greatest achievement.” But by pulling out all U.S. peacekeepers — mostly for a 2012 reelection talking point — Obama ensured an ISIS wasteland. He put his promised eye on Afghanistan at last, and we have lost more soldiers there than during the Bush administration and a Taliban victory seems likely after more than a decade of lost American blood and treasure. The message seems to be that it is better for Obama to have his eye off something than on it.

Remember those threats to Syria? After the U.S. threatened and backed off, the violence only escalated and spilled into Iraq.

Libya was no paradise under Gadhafi, but it is now Mogadishu on the Mediterranean. Not even the president’s supporters believe that he told the truth about Benghazi. Reset with Russia green-lighted Putin, as he sized up Barack Obama as a lamb waiting to be eaten. The Bowe Bergdahl-for-five-terrorists swap (likely illegal) is not headline news only because dozens of scandals since have eclipsed it, and the likely deserter is apparently still kept incommunicado, lest he speak in the fashion of his father at the earlier White House press conference. I don’t think Bergdahl is a model for future negotiations with the Taliban.

Israel? We never have been more estranged from the Jewish state. Open mic outbursts against Netanyahu define our true policies. The terrorist state run by Hamas is now a partner for peace – tunnels, missiles, syringes, handcuffs and all. Did outreach to Hamas lessen or spike violence?

Did the “special relationship” with the Islamist Recep Erdogan lead to regional calm, and does it still exist?

Look for the media to start to criticize Obama a bit more. By the time the midterms are over look for it to ramp up further. Not because they are now taking notice or have somehow found their journalistic ethics, but because it is time to now make things appear fair.
They will criticize Obama now because he has been successful in fundamentally transforming America beyond their wildest progressive dreams.
In any fixed game, once its in the bag for sure, its always good optics to call a few penalties on the winning team.
They will even try to imply “they too” were fooled, even though they were the ones that were covering up for Obama and destroying his opponents all the way along.
We shall see if the Libs can run the Obama playbook up here (a bit ironic, since I believe the Dems and media ran the 1968 Trudeau playbook to get Obama elected – with the bonus that Obama could play the race card).
One thing Trudeau is not, is a good speaker or thinker. They can only hide him for so long. My guess is any time he spends out of the public eye is time being spent being groomed.

Up here in the land of the great white bear we too have a problem similar in nature to that now experienced by our “extended family” to our south. One for whom native drums beat loudly this very day. A ‘know nothing puddy tat’ riding on the reputation of his father and little else. We have also seen this movie before much to our dismay. Which brings me to my final thought for today.

“What if” our federal conservative party began to compare a future PM Justin Trudeau to that sorry excuse now relegated to “golfer in chief” currently resident in the White House? What if the CPC began to paint Justin with the same brush now being used on Obama south of our border utilizing their “bjillions” of bucks to hammer the point home?